People v. Miller

DOOLING, J. Defendant was convicted of first degree murder and the penalty was fixed at life imprisonment. A motion for a new trial was denied. He has appealed from the judgment and the order denying his motion for a new trial.

[824]On the night o£ December 2, 1960, defendant and Charley Harper, a friend, were visiting at a neighbor’s home. After spending some two or three hours there, during which time there was some drinking and gambling, defendant and Harper left. They walked down the street toward a liquor store. Harper testified that he noticed a girl at the corner of a building across the street from the store. Harper went into the store to buy some cigarettes and left defendant crossing the street. As Harper came out of the store, he saw defendant grab the girl and “push her behind the wall.” Harper stood in front of the store a few minutes, then walked down the street, “passed by” and “looked behind the wall” but “didn’t see [any] more”; so he continued a little further down the street, came back and looked and saw no one, and returned to the liquor store and stood there. In a few minutes defendant came out from behind the wall; no one was with him. As defendant started walking down the street, Harper caught up with him and asked defendant, “How you come out, Buddy?” Defendant replied, “You haven’t seen me.” Harper then went off to visit another friend and defendant continued walking down the street. The next day upon learning that the girl had been killed, Harper went to the police.

The police found the deceased’s body behind a walk-in icebox located on a lot next to the building where Harper had seen defendant with the girl. Her clothes were disarrayed and torn; her skirt was up above her mid-section; her blouse was ripped open and her brassiere was torn off; she had no panties on or other garments; her shoes were off and lying on the ground. She had blood about her hip and her head looked as though it had been beaten. There were blood splatters on the cement walkway close to the body and marks on the ground as though the body had been dragged around to the rear of the icebox. A janitor at a nearby dance hall found the girl’s purse in the street early the next morning; he was briefly questioned by the police but not detained.

A lady whose house was at the rear of the lot where the body was found testified that about 11 or 11:15 p. m. on the night in question she heard someone moving outside her bedroom window; that there then followed a faint call of a woman for help, a man’s command to “hush” and again a woman’s, call for help. As she thereafter listened, she heard a “fast, unusual moving around,” like “a scuffling,” a “drop of .a balloon and [it] busted,” as though “something was popping ... it was moving around so fast.”